Advertising used to push malware
There have recently been unusual attacks made by hackers, who used advertising to push malware. It was lately used to distribute bad BitTorrent clients by infesting a computer with malware, which was based on advertising. The advertisements used were the ones that sold on the major advertising exchanges.
Although it is not the first time advertising is used for harmful purposes, and even such websites as MySpace have seen something similar, it is surely difficult to cope with such problem. Patching, anti-virus and anti-spyware software takes care of some of it, but there still are some hardly solvable problems. One of those is that such malware is found by signature. As far as those signatures change, anti-virus and anti-spyware software are always one (or even more) step behind.
Most of users are familiar with the standard refrain not to open up many types of files in email systems or be careful what sites are you visiting. But who would expect an attack coming from selling an advertisement on anyone of the major advertising networks? Probably no one would, therefore this method to get malware to users’ system is becoming more and more popular.
Making people feel afraid of advertisements, as they are now afraid of unknown emails and evil websites is definitely not a way out. In such case companies as Google, Yahoo, Adbrite, Adengage and others, according to webpronews.com, would simply crumble overnight as clicks stop, revenue stops, and the entire model becomes compromised. Therefore, no company is going to teach users not to click on an advertisement.
It’s a problem that should be solved by advertising agencies. They are making money from each click, so they have to guarantee that their clients are safe. It may actually take hackers only a few minutes to set up a new malware delivery system onto an existing account using advertisements, while new account have a waiting time of days.
The only company that did good things to make sure that their reputation is not compromised, which means did things to assure users’ safety, is Google. According to webpronews.com with the sheer profusion of systems, web sites, and advertisements seen on a regular basis, ensuring that each advertisement in the network is safe is not going to be easy without some form of automated system (referring to the one used by Google).
The only ways to protect your computer is keep it patched, updated and be excessively careful while visiting evil sites and, of course, clicking advertisements.
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